Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Wills and we are also discussing divorce here in Thailand. Seemingly these things shouldn't have very much to do with one another but unfortunately they do more often than one would suspect because one of the big things that can happen in the event of a divorce is I find that a lot of people often forget to amend their Will.

I've actually seen circumstances come up like this. It is a very awkward situation where you have somebody who has passed away, they have been divorced from someone but their Will is still out there and their Will stipulates that their assets are bequeathed to their prior spouse. You'll oftentimes see circumstances like this arise, it is usually somebody frankly who doesn't have a regular Attorney and they just, I get it people don't really want to think about their death, they are not thinking about their Will. They get a divorce, they may think about it for a moment and then the struggles, the trials and tribulations of life arise, they have got to deal with something, they forget about it and then lo and behold they are gone and now their stuff is going maybe to someone they didn't really particularly want it to go to. Meanwhile another thing to think about is subsequent remarriage. This can have an impact on whether or not one basically drafts a Will because if you have a new spouse you are definitely going to want a new Will. Yeah there are methods in both Thailand and Common Law jurisdictions where you can challenge a Will on the basis that, "Hey man, his state of mind on this whole thing substantially changed from the time that that person wrote the Will." But that said, when you have got a written properly formalized Will for example here in Thailand, it's pretty hard to overcome that even with a pretty compelling narrative, it is oftentimes pretty hard to overcome that instrument because that instrument is highly demonstrative of testamentary intent; that person's intention of what to do with their belongings. 

So those who do have a Thai Will and maybe something happens with their spouse or something, definitely a good idea to look at redrafting that document. The other thing to bear in mind is remarriage. You may want to think about basically the state of your estate should something happen to you and you are probably going to want to go ahead and draft a Will accordingly.